University of Groningen DISKURS. De plaats van geloofservaringen binnen de rationele handelingstheorie van Jürgen Habermas Ploeger, A.K. IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 1989 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Ploeger, A. K. (1989). DISKURS. De plaats van geloofservaringen binnen de rationele handelingstheorie van Jürgen Habermas Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Groningen Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 07-11-2018
Summary 'Diskurs' : On the function of faith-experiences within the theory of rational action of Jürgen Habermas In 1981 Jürgen Habermas provisionally finished a long thinking process by publishing his "Theory of Communicative Action". His ideas have met with a wide response, among others from theologicans. On the one hand that is rather surprising because he demonstrates that the religious point of view, anyway as a rational, scientific way of thinking, has lost sense. On the other hand his theory of action should be, in his own words, a continuation of the Jewish and Christian traditions. So the object of this theological study can be formulated as an attempt to trace, whether the theory of action of Habermas is compatible with a commitment to the Christian faith and useful for practical theology (Ch.1). Habermas seeks to give the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School a new rational and normative foundation. He has turned away from the conceptual framework of a philosophy of consciousness, based on a subject-object model of cognition and action, towards a conceptual framework of a theory of language and of communicative action. He distinguishes between three equivalent kinds of rationality, viz. objective, normative and expressive rationality. This rational symmetry is implicitly contained in the structure of human speech as such. In labour man might be acting instrumentally and objectively quite well. But that' s not possible when we are using language terms. The propositional, objective, sentence, e.g. "The ball is red" does not refer to reality on its own. That is only the case if we bear in mind the complete speech act ought to be formulated as : "I am telling you, that p." Habermas distinguishes three types of speechacts, viz. constatives like the one above; regulatives (e.g. I order you, that q") and expressives (e.g. "I am afraid, that r."). Anyone performing such a kind of speechact in every day life is acting communicatively, if he raises -mostly implicitly- a validity claim for the truth, respectively for the rightness or the truthfullness of his words. Habermas distinguishes between, on the one hand, acting communic- atively in this way to attain -mutualunderstanding ("Verständigung") and maybe agreement ("Einverständnis") and, on the other, discourse, the formal form of argumentation, which is fundamental for our understanding ("begrifflich fundamental"). He argues that the motivation to act rationally, 'in three ways', proceeds from the process of argumentation itself. Thus he says that thinking and acting of modern man might be in principle, transparant. We cannot and should not try to shelter ourselves behind religious norms and values. The Sacred is 'linguistificated'. If people wish to agree, they can reproduce symbolically the life-world, i.e. they can realize at the same time themselves, form their own identity and contribute to building a righteous community. The Dutch philosopher, and authority on the works of Habermas, Kunneman corrects him by saying that the reproduction is also possible by other forms of social actions, but not, what he calls, the 'refreshment' of the life-world. However, the symbolic reproduction of reality is uncoupled from the material reproduction. Habermas is fully aware, that economy and state can be studied by preference as being systems. In those areas the use
of language is dominated by the use of steering media, viz. money and power. It is no use trying to change this matter, for this development is the result of the differentiations which took place in modern society and brought us a lot of good. But the problem this process entails is the lack of any interest of the economy and state in observing the bounds of their domains : they extend their influence on the life-world and even 'colonise' it. In contrast with Parsons and Luhmann Habermas means, that it ought to be the reverse. Money and power should 'be recoupled' to and anchored in the communicatively structured life-world. Systemic integration presupposes forms of social integration and a legitimation of basic laws and institutions (Ch. 2 and 3.3). Habermas' theory received a great deal of criticism, but he defends his work consistently, if we might accept his presuppositions. Yet we constantly meet with two points of criticism, which are fundamental to the presentation of our problem in theology. First of all : doesn't Habermas exaggerate the importance of threefold rationality, even though claiming it is? Second, does he defend his presuppositions with a conclusive argument? His starting-point is the intuition of the human possibility of "Verständigung", realized in a universal discourse which points to an idealized life-world. Though Habermas rejects Utopianism, he still calls his intuition a quasi-transcendental given. Also Kunneman questions the foundation on which Habermas seeks to build his construction of an idealized community of communication. With regard to my first question he argues that Habermas can defend his type of rationality quite well against his opponents, but does not exploit all the possibilities of his theoretical framework. Kunneman concludes that the integrity of the actors - and therefore the possibility of symmetric communication of actors- should be given the primate over the truth of cognitive knowledge. Wellmer adds : and over the logic of a systemic rationalization process. Moreover Kunneman expounds Habermas's theory of discourse in such a way, that the desires and feelings ("Lebensbedürfnisse") of each particular person have decisive meaning for an 'identity discourse' (centred around expressive rationality), next to practical discourse (normative rationality) and in this line even for theoretical discourse (objective rationality). The striking feature of this exposition of Habermas's theory is, that, though Kunneman gives the exact pound of flesh to the primacy of 'threefold' rationality, it can no more rule over the non-rational domain (Ch.3). In 1976 already the German theologican Helmuth Peukert indicated, that science theory relativises theoretical paradigms, arguing that the status of theories is also dependent on the presuppositions of the scientists themselves. In Peukert's opinion the school to which Habermas belongs presents the most useful science theory of the moment, as it is based on normative communicative action. Nevertheless Peukert mentions an apori in this action theory. Solidarity stops where life ends; those people who died guiltless for the sake of justice do not get any justification. Christian faith however can speak about 'anamnetic solidarity' with the death. For in this tradition the issue is the reality which is experienced in the fundamental experiences at the boundaries of life. This reality asks for a fundamental theology which is a theory about people acting communicatively and anamnetic-solidary towards death -the only way to get my real identity, being aware of existing towards death, and a theory about the reality which is experienced and disclosed by this action. This reality, visibly exemplified in the occurrence of the rising of Jesus, saves the other, who has acted historically for the happiness of others, from destruction.
The problem, one might say, of such a strict intersubjective theory is the absence of a place for the revelation of God; that means for the working of the Holy Spirit. Though Peukert is making the religious point of view thoroughly plausibel, the content of religion stays exchangeable (Ch.4). That's why I will develop another theological line in the following chapters. Firstly I describe the attraction of a theory in which an intersubjective -immanent- metaphysic is converging with revelation. Though it should be very useful for pedagogues of religion, it must be rejected, insofar as it suggests that revelation can be defined exhaustingly -in any sense- as a human affair. In my opinion we cannot go further -from our human side- than stating that reality cannot be definitely defined : reality might be called as being 'porous'. Within reality we know all kinds of religious matters, and religion, defined in this way, belongs to secular human competence, which is also used by Christians. According to Jüngel, however, we dispose of these possibilities of metaphysics and take our starting point in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Wherever the Holy Spirit may be effective through man, heaven and earth agree with each other. Faith gives life a new meaning. So there is more than reality via language, though people will express by language that surplus in their lives and action. At this point we have attained the first goal of this study : theology can accept and use Habermas's theory of communicative action in a large degree. But it rejects the vision of Habermas, that the ideal community of communication is the last quasi-transcendental "Telos" of human action. Theology is also allowed scientifically to retain the revelation of God. It cannot rationally 'prove God', but it can still make the revelation of God plausibel (Ch.6). Habermas' s theory, and especcially Kunneman' s interpretation of the theory of discourse will then be remodelled in a way that action theory will be characterised by the palette that is added to reality by Christian faith. This adaptation of action theory is also accomplished by the fact that "Verständigung" is motivated by the experience of faith that has entered reality. Grözinger' s study of religious -esthetic- experience is of help here. Again with the help of Seel it may be clear that experience of faith has two aspects : the cognitive aspect, to be expressed in language, and an emotional aspect. The latter is essential to it : it is the revelation which changes our view of reality (the added palette to reality) and moreover the religious attitude itself is changing. From this the following theses are derived, on which Habermas himself could agree : (a) Mankind should learn, that it is only possible to live humanely if they are rationally oriented to reaching understanding; (b) Religion may be -unfortunately we can't say 'is' -, among other ways, serving as an external motivation for the process of reaching understanding; (c) Religion (faith experiences) may be helpful for the motivation in everyday praxis. (Ch.7). In Chapter 8 we find out the line along which the motivation from Christian faith will become effective. Here we use the insights of Kunneman, mentioned above. From a Christian point of view God -though we cannot render him rationally- is the Source of the rational. So it is evident now that the so-called "begrifflich fundamentale", i.e. the formal pragmatics, is not the most fundamental matter of existence. Enlightenment can be evaluated in a positive sense, we agree with Habermas, if we start from a 'threefold
rationality'. Then we must take leave of the idea, that the cognitive-instrumental or purposive rationality is all to be said. But Christians know (in a threefold rational way!) from their faith (non-rational!) that the rational in his turn is only a -though essentialpart of the anthropological possibilities (rationally argued) and gifts (non-rational said). They believe that God is inspiring people by his Holy Spirit to act in a just and loving way. Of course theology does not in the least substitute for secular sciences. On the one hand it is working together with them and has as its authentic input action intentions which are rendered into secular rational language. These intentions have a non-rational origin and are fostered by awe and love for the Creator and his creation. For a Christian lives by the new meaning God is giving to reality. This changes all life, so that we see cosmos as a creation. On the other hand, faith, hope and charity can no more be abused as a ideological cloak for power and influence. This purge, which has fortunately started already within Christianity, is supported and analysed by the theory of Habermas. So we have reached the second goal of this study, viz. the tracing of the possibilities of the theory of communicative action to be used within theology. In chapter 9 I discuss the use of the theory of communicative action in practical theology. We especially look at the way Van der Ven c.s. in Nijmegen (NL) developed practical theology as so-called 'theory of religious communicative action'. He designed an empirical theology which is built up from qualitative and quantitative methods of social research and may be called 'intra-disciplinary'. He attaches great value to the nomothetical method of De Groot, a Dutch follower of Popper, which has an explicit cognitive-instrumental framework. Kunneman is very right in arguing, that this method is a good example for what he calls "the truth-funnel" in social sciences. It works like a sieve, only letting through objectivizable moments of social problems and eliminating as far as possible the normative and the subjective elements. Thus the operationalizing of theological concepts within this design of an empirical theology leads to a deformation of the problems, for the objective attitude overrules too much both of the other ones. We may conclude that communicative action and the latter form of empirical theology are not compatible. We can better not define practical theology as being communicative action. Moreover, we must keep in mind that church communities have to deal with problems of influence and power; therefore other kinds of action types are needed. Nevertheless the theory of communicative action can offer us a very useful framework for action to highlight our experiences of faith and to make them productive for our action within church communities as well as for secular action. We might suggest a model of practical theology which starts with stimulating the possibilities for Christians to be 'disclosed' for religious experiences and for the use of this experiences in daily life. In this way we search within all kinds of Christian communities for arriving at an understanding on the Christian way of life. Though practical theology must not forget to study system tendences and other forms of social action, e.g. strategic action, her own method must give preference to communica- tive action. This kind of action should be self-evident in Christian commun- ities. And everyone who wants to, can share this open "Diskurs".